


The Elegance of Deduction

by Miss_sabre



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post The Great Game, Pre-Scandal in Belgravia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:29:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_sabre/pseuds/Miss_sabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John hadn’t even noticed it happening, but he had known that Sherlock had subtly imprinted himself on his mind and on his skin. He could almost feel the mark as a physical thing, sprawled over scarred skin and mind alike. Property of Sherlock, Do Not Touch. Scrawled casually, and then forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Elegance of Deduction

**Author's Note:**

> This is post pool au fic, started way back when I first finished season one of Sherlock, and finished not quite before season two of Sherlock begins. This is my first (posted) fic ever. Beta credit to the lovely, talented, sexy, amazing tartanfics; without her I never would have tried this. Her writing inspires me, as do her silly faces. If you haven’t, go read her writing!

Sherlock had acted before John could catch his breath, Sherlock’s gun pointed at the bomb and a lazy smile slotted in place.

"Probably my answer has crossed yours,” he said with a studied nonchalance. “So why would you come back? What do you want? It’s not for John or me, no,” his eyes narrowed. “It’s for something else.”

Jim Moriarty laughed again, high pitched mocking laughter that made John want to cringe and his leg want to hurt. Moriarty’s laughter reminded him of the pattering of gun fire and the rain of debris that haunted his memories of Afghanistan. The next night he dreamed, he would hear Moriarty’s laugh echoing around the bombed shell of a building where he’d watched his mate Micky die, unable to do anything. “So clever, Sherlock, trying to figure out what Jim is planning. Go on, deduce something for me. Just this once.” Moriarty gave a huge exaggerated pout, and John watched the red sight dance on Sherlock’s chest.

“Alright, have it your way. John, come here.” Sherlock’s eyes didn’t leave Moriarty’s. John breathed in deeply to steady his nerves, and then stood up as calmly as he could and went to Sherlock. “Right there.” Sherlock said, when John was partially shielded behind Sherlock, and John stopped. “Still fine?”

Johns mouth was dry. “Never better.”

“Now tell me, John, why do you think Moriarty’s come back?”

John thought about saying, “Because he’s a sick, twisted, sadistic bastard,” and didn’t. He wet his mouth, and considered the question. “Power play, probably. Meaning he wants something from you. And he’s a sick, twisted, sadistic bastard.” There it was, his sympathetic nervous system kicking into overdrive and sending more adrenalin crashing through his veins. Oh, he’d missed this. He could feel Sherlock’s brief moment of amusement next to him, though nothing changed in his expression.

Moriarty tutted. “Now, now, Sherlock, is it so hard to train your puppy into some manners? And while showing off that little trick was amusing, you’ve hardly come any closer to fulfilling my request, and I might get BORED.” Sherlock stepped backward and glanced at John, his expression hardened, then softened again. John could see in the movement of Sherlock’s eyes that the sight on his chest had shifted up to his head while Moriarty cooed those last words. Sherlock locked eyes with John again, and John was shocked by the open emotion he saw there. A new Sherlock, or maybe just a Sherlock John hadn’t had the chance to know. Shame that they were about to die.  
     
Something else shifted at that moment as well... suddenly it was like the world funnelled and John could see the only things that mattered. Sherlock was asking him a question. It was in his eyes. One second, they were tracking the little red dot, and the next their eyes met, and Sherlock was asking him a silent question, grey eyes assertive. _Are you ready?_

John tried to respond with a yes, even though he wasn’t sure what for, and he could only hope Sherlock had understood, because he looked away before John wanted him to. John was left with the lingering feeling that there was something important John had missed in that look. Something underneath the first meaning.

“I’ll get to it. You asked for one of my famous deductions, and I’ll give it to you however I want. Wouldn’t have the same flare if I didn’t.” He took one step forward, and then another, gun still trained on the bomb. “Why did you use the old woman? That was a break in pattern, and you were establishing a pattern for me to follow--why else use the botulism twice? You didn’t become the world’s only consulting criminal by making stupid mistakes. You _weren’t_ ... it wasn’t a coincidence that--” Sherlock was now very close to Moriarty, and John felt Sherlock’s plan like a physical jolt. The snipers hadn’t shot yet, so obviously they been ordered not to shoot unless they believed it absolutely necessary to keep Moriarty safe. If the boss was toast, no paycheck for them. Right now John was free to move, but he’d only have a moment--and Sherlock had just told him when that moment was. That “weren’t”--that was a message. Sherlock had stressed the word a little too much... Moriarty would know that wasn’t a mistake, but he wouldn’t have time to figure out what it meant. It was a message meant only for John.  
Sherlock was telling John to run. He was telling John that he had a plan.

John figured all of that out in the split second before and after Sherlock said “weren’t,” and he ran. For Sherlock, for that brilliant mind, for the petulant man, for his infuriating flatmate, he ran and trusted Sherlock to follow. Something else about the message bothered John, but there was no time.

He didn’t expect the bomb to go off mere seconds after he’d rounded the corner, and part of the meaning struck him before everything went bright and black, _Oh, that was goodbye._

* * *

  
It was elegant, really, the way all the pieces slotted together. Sometimes, late at night, he’d think he’d finally grasped how many different ways Sherlock manipulated the strings of his life, and the lives of those around him. How far reaching the man’s staggering intellect could be. John could feel how Sherlock had planned it, had guided him to that moment since--since when? Since Sherlock decided to get rid of John’s psychosomatic limp, probably. Or maybe after John had shot the old cabbie. Somewhere along the line Sherlock had decided he cared enough about John to... to program him. Things go bad, and Sherlock only has to say one word and John will be taken care of.    
Elegant.

John hadn’t even noticed it happening, but he had known that Sherlock had subtly imprinted himself on his mind and on his skin. He could almost feel the mark as a physical thing, sprawled over scarred skin and mind alike. Property of Sherlock, Do Not Touch. Scrawled casually, and then forgotten.

It was in the games he played. Sherlock would quirk his mouth, and toss something at John, or maybe point at a piece of evidence, and John would try to play Sherlock’s game. John wasn’t sure how it worked, but it did. It had worked when it needed to. Sherlock’s imprint did its job, and John, for only a moment, really understood Sherlock’s thinking. Understood the man who left human heads in the fridge, who intimately understood the molecular structure of any chemical that came under his microscope, but not human decency, who played a crime scene like a violin. Sherlock, who had flung the parka away from John like... like he cared.

John felt large and clumsy next to this man, next to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock moved like he’d given up on his body years ago, abandoned it as mere technicality of existence, and with that abandonment he’d gained an unconscious grace. John was very much aware of his own body. Of the bullet wound, of the make-shift surgical cuts that criss-crossed the area where he’d tried so hard to find the bullet, of the tremor in his hand and of the ghost of a pain that remained in his leg whenever he thought about it, of the space he took up, and of the way his breath caught clumsily in his throat when he realized Sherlock was observing _him_ , and not just the pieces that made him up. Sherlock was ethereal, and John was just muscle and flesh and bone. Why should he care about John?

    __* * *__

 _Beep. Beep. Beep._  
John couldn’t get the sound of Sherlock’s cardiac monitor out of his head--its steady beeping both comforting and maddening (much the way John had come to see Sherlock the last few mad days). John hadn’t wanted to leave Sherlock’s bedside. He would have fallen asleep with the chair pulled up close and his upper body hunched over the side of Sherlock’s bed if the nurses hadn’t conspired to send him home for the night.

He’d screamed, upon waking up in his own hospital bed, thrashing, restraints chafing at his wrists and ankles. “Sherlock!” he yelled, the sound of gunfire and laughter echoing in his ears. What felt like tens and hundreds of nurses bore down on him, cool hands pressing him back into the bed, mundane voices hushing and whispering that he was safe now, and that Sherlock was in the bed just next to his. His breath had come ragged, and he hadn’t been able to tell the hospital sounds from the sounds of dry desert nights, or water lapping at the edges of a pool.

     After days and nights spent in hazy grey terror, reality started to bleed itself into his existence, and John started to wake up more often then not in a hospital bed, and not a field of rubble. A few days later the nurses let him out of bed, and he’d stood next to Sherlock’s bed wondering at how pale and normal he looked, apart from a cast and a peppering of bruises. His outside had come off lightly. Lestrade had come by, and told him everything the police knew, hoping that John would know more, and obviously wishing that Sherlock was awake to fill in the gaps with an “Obviously it was--” and poof, magic.

No, John corrected himself, not magic. Just simple, elegant deduction.  
     
They’d found Sherlock blown into the pool by the blast--far smaller than the other one--and John further away, underneath rubble. They had found no one else inside the building, not a sign of Moriarty. John had told Lestrade that he didn’t remember much. There was a man, and a bomb, and then everything turned black, and sorry officer, but he couldn’t remember who it was or what he looked like, or why it happened. It was all too grey and fuzzy.  
     
John knew Lestrade didn’t quite buy it, but he was willing to wait for Sherlock to wake up.

The name Moriarty echoed in John’s brain and pulled at his lips, but he hadn’t said it once since... since the incident. It rotted away at his throat and mind, but he was terrified that if he said the name then he couldn’t wake up to find out it was only another bad dream.

 _Beep. Beep. Beep._ John turned in bed and tried staring at the wall.  
     
It couldn’t be a bad dream, because he didn’t think his subconscious would be cruel enough to give him a new lacework of nasty gashes and scars to overlap the old, scars that he finds himself examining morbidly given the chance. This one covered an old bullet wound, that one looked like cigarette burns like raindrops down his thighs. He also thought--or he hoped--his mind wouldn’t be cruel enough to keep him waiting to know whether or not Sherlock would wake up, but he wasn’t sure about this.

Sherlock. Sherlock lying in the hospital bed, with the smug, interested expression drained away, with pale skin curiously devoid of scars, but with a hundred little bruises. Sherlock, who could tell him why Moriarty had really come back into the room after leaving, whether or not the new limp John had gained since the incident was real or psychosomatic, and Sherlock who could tell him why--why why _why_ \--he hadn’t run too, why he’d let the bomb go off so close to him when, in all probability, it should have killed him.  
     
It was at about that point that the nurses saw him pounding a fist on the bedside next to Sherlock, and decided to send him home. That’s where he was now, trying to sleep and dreading the images his mind dredged up, listening to phantom cardiac monitor beeps. Moonlight rippled like chlorinated water over the walls, pulsing like a weak heartbeat, and John found himself praying for the first time since Afghanistan

Please, God, let Sherlock live.

* * *

  
John should have known that Sherlock wouldn’t run. It seemed so obvious now. If only he were a little better at seeing the world around him, at seeing the way it intersects and interacts--the way Sherlock could.

Sherlock had given him cases, asked his opinion on things, and observed him. It had all lead up to that moment at the pool, when he’d looked and John had understood. It started with the lady in pink... whether that had been Sherlock’s purpose from the beginning, John wasn’t sure, though he was certain that it had become Sherlock’s intention. He had enjoyed how Sherlock’s undivided attention felt when Sherlock asked him a question, while hating how stupid he felt. John was a smart man, a doctor, but to Sherlock he was a child.

Sherlock watched him, prodded him, offended him. He was training John to understand his mind, little by little, with a patience that John alone noticed. Sometimes John overlooked it himself in his own frustration. “It’s so simple,” Sherlock would say with a quirk of the mouth like a sneer, but not quite. _No, it’s not_ , John always wanted to yell, but he’d suppress it because he knew he was the only one who would. It was worth it, for those brief glimpses into the man that Sherlock didn’t let anyone else see.

No, Sherlock hadn’t quite trained him, he’d programmed him. Played him. Tricked him. Saved him. After all, he had no one else who cared; he needed to keep the one man who did alive.

Bastard.

* * *

  
John didn’t get to sleep that night, and as soon as he deemed it appropriate--4:30am--he got up and made himself a cup of tea, and then another, and another. He ignored the head in the fridge as usual, but he also ignored his laptop, and Sherlock’s usual chair. As soon as he thought everything would be open, he walked to a nearby cafe to get a cup of coffee (he hated the stuff, but it was good for some fast caffeine, as he’d learned in Afghanistan), and then caught a cab to the hospital.

In the hospital the sound of the cardiac monitor was normal, not the great roaring beast it had become in his head during the night. John was a doctor after all; he was used to it. He could sit by Sherlock’s bed and let it wash over him. Instead he focused on how sharp and intelligent Sherlock’s face looked even while unconscious--surely that meant something? Nothing as bright as Sherlock could be snuffed out by something as ordinary as an explosion. But John, John was normal, and he should have died a hundred times already, once for every one of Sherlock’s bruises. Instead he was sitting next to a hospital bed, waiting. Living. He just kept living.

“Indulging in self pity is useless, you know,” Sherlock’s voice rasped, and John nearly knocked over his chair in surprise.

“Sherlock--! I... How did you know?“

“That you were feeling sorry for yourself? A lesser man than I could have deduced that. You were sitting there with your head bowed, looking clearly pained. Only grief or guilt produces that face... and it was a bit premature to start grieving me...” Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment, perhaps taking cool inventory of his body, perhaps tired. He was still... but it was a stillness that was gloriously full of life to John’s eyes. “You might better ask how I know that the nurses restrained you because you were having violent nightmares or that the nurses sent you home last night, thinking a familiar environment would do you some good, or how I know that you didn’t sleep at all.” John opened his mouth to ask, but Sherlock cut him off.  “You reek of coffee, and there’s a receipt from the place nearby our flat sticking out of your jacket pocket. You look beaten up enough that the only reason anyone would send you home is if they thought you were fixating--which you do--and the circles under your eyes suggest it was only last night that they sent you home, and don’t ask me to explain any more than that. If you can’t figure it out, then you’re stupider then I thought.”

“Sherlock--” John wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.  Did he want to yell at him? Apologize? Question him? Thank him? “I guess it wasn’t so bad that I made a hero out of you, after all. After what you did. You... you saved me.”

Sherlock focused in sharply on John, eyes suddenly clouded and enigmatic. “Why? What makes you say that?”

“Well, first the parka and then... and then you told me to run. You shot the bombs and you... you could have died.” John was starting to annoy himself with his own clumsy use of language.

“No, we both could have died. I only heightened the possibility that you, of the two of us, might survive.”

“Sherlock!” John knew he sounded like he was chastising a child, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What, do you want me to say ‘you’re welcome,’ is that it? Pledge my undying love to you, now that I’ve ‘saved’ you?”

“No! I just want you to acknowledge...” _that you care, that I’m not seeing something that isn’t there._

Sherlock turned away, and John told himself to calm down. He wasn’t sure Sherlock was going to continue speaking, until, “Acknowledge that I wanted to save you? Fine. I acknowledge it.” He didn’t look back, and John’s trained eye saw the strain Sherlock was putting himself through, right after waking up from severe head trauma. Some doctor he was.

“I’ll let you rest. The nurses will take care of you.” John went to stand up, grabbing his cane and knocking the chair back into place.

“John...” It was so soft, John wasn’t sure he heard it. Sherlock was lying still, head turned away.

“Yes?” asked John.

    “If you hadn’t been there, I would have been fine. I would have found a way, or died. It doesn’t really matter which.”

“It does matter-!”

“Shut up. I’m not done. You were there because of me. You came first, that’s all. I needed you to stay alive.”  
John found he had nothing to say to this. Instead he slowly walked back to the bed, looking at Sherlock. “Sherlock, it matters to me. I thought you had died... You said goodbye.”

“I am tired,” said Sherlock, dismissively, staring at the wall by the bed.

“So am I,” and John let his whole body slacken over the hospital bed, sitting back into his stool, leaning his forehead against Sherlock’s side, and closing his eyes. Despite all the caffeine, he was tired. His mind hadn’t had the chance to rest since the kidnapping. He heard Sherlock’s sharp intake of breath, but then he relaxed noticeably, and John was just a little too tired and caffeinated to care what they looked like now. Maybe they could rest for a little while, maybe together they could stop John’s mind from its constant, jittery turning. Maybe John could feel whole again.  
John stood leaning over Sherlock’s bed for a very long time.

* * *

  
    A week later and Sherlock was allowed to come home, as long as John agreed to look after him and a nurse visited once a week to check up on them both until a medical professional (other than John) deemed them sufficiently recovered. Sherlock had been driving the entire hospital crazy in his boredom, and John had a feeling there was a betting pool going on which of the the nurses would be the last to break down crying. Sherlock probably knew, but John couldn’t bring himself to ask.

    John had visited every day, but found excuses to leave sooner each time. Sherlock was more irritable with John than usual, and John found himself preoccupied in Sherlock’s presence with figuring out what idea was niggling at the back of his mind. It was something very important, but John was unable to put it in words. The awkward silences in the hospital room were getting to him, and Sherlock didn’t really do meaningless patter.

    “John, I don’t need you to tell me about the weather, I can see it just fine out the window. And even if I couldn’t, I would have known from your clothes. Don’t patronize me, you don’t need to sit here and talk to me like a child who needs constant company.”

    John had bit back the remark that if he didn’t want to be treated like a child, he should start acting like an adult. He left a few minutes later. Sherlock didn’t turn to watch him go.  
It wasn’t just silence, either. Sherlock did silence, for hours or days at a time, and John was used to that. This was different. Neither of them spoke about about Moriarty, the pool, or even the cases that led up to the pool. So much was going unsaid, but John didn’t even know what. The feeling that everything would get better now that Sherlock was awake and fine faded away into a dream. When had Sherlock ever made anything better?

 _So much better_ supplied a voice in John’s head, but he refused to think about how or why. Normal people didn’t... didn’t get off on violence and puzzles.

He didn’t think about his reaction the first time Sherlock asked him to go with him to a crime scene.

    John expected Sherlock to go as stir crazy in the flat as he had in the hospital, but instead Sherlock spent days in front of the television, or doing crosswords (to discover where the writer was when he wrote it, or anything else that the puzzle made “obvious”), but he hadn’t been bothering John. He had barely looked at John since the day he woke up.

    The longer he went without talking about it, the worse the nightmares got. He was used to dreaming explosions and deserts, and he was even getting used to lapping pools, but now sometimes he dreamed that he was wearing the vest, and Sherlock’s eyes contained the whole world and no sympathy when he shot John with John’s own pistol. Other times Moriarty paraded Sherlock in front of John and pressed him onto his knees, smirking when he handed John the gun. “Can’t do it, can you? Can’t do anything right,” Sherlock would taunt, looking up at John, and John would take aim with a steady hand, and fire. One night Sherlock stood in the water, the pool lapping at his bare skin, and John swam towards him, only to discover that the water was pulling him down. Sherlock began to laugh, and John woke with an erection, breathing hard.

* * *

The next morning John got out of bed, bleary and irritable after a restless night. He hadn’t got much in the way of sleep after that dream. He stumbled down the stairs to the sound of Sherlock scraping on his violin, and silently cursed Sherlock’s inhuman hours. John was sure that if he listened closely enough he would be able to detect some complex mathematical equation governing the current squeals of the instrument, but it was too early for math, and _God_ it was loud.

John didn’t say anything as he prepared tea for himself and Sherlock, but the cacophony became louder and more chaotic. It peaked while John was pouring the hot water. His hand gave an involuntary shake and he knocked one of the mugs off the counter. The water spilled from the cup, and he instinctively flung the kettle away from himself with a shout. The water splashed over the kitchen, and John was perversely pleased to see that a little even got into a bowl Sherlock had been using as a petri dish, but that John secretly thought was Sherlock messing with him.

“Damn,” John swore, voice clipped and tight.  
The cacophony stopped at the sound of the shattered mug. “John?” The chair squeaked, and John could hear Sherlock setting down the violin. “Are you alright?”

“What, you can’t deduce my answer from the sound my mug made as it shattered? Or maybe from the pitch of the air or something?” John gritted his teeth, and waited for an answer. Nothing but silence. Just long enough for John to start feeling like a complete arsehole. He was forming an apology in his head when he heard Sherlock sit back down and draw one loud, deliberate squeak on his violin.

“Of course I knew. I thought you’d appreciate me putting on the show. I won’t do it again. Now maybe you can get a handle on your childish temper.”

    Oh, that was rich. Any ounce of sorry that he’d started to feel evaporated at Sherlock’s cool, arrogant tone. Normally he knew when to let these things lie, but normally he wasn’t kidnapped, and normally he didn’t dream that he was killing his friends, and normally he didn’t wake up from those dreams with... and normally he didn’t feel like he was walking on eggshells and ignored for no reason. Why the bloody hell was he being ignored?. He stepped around the broken glass and puddling water into the living room to face Sherlock. He was sitting on his chair with his feet slung carelessly over one arm, and his robe hanging down the front, looking away from John. Typical, lately.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Sherlock? Tell me that. Are you upset that you didn’t catch Moriarty? Are you upset at me? For god’s sake, are you upset you didn’t die? You’ve been angry at something since you came home.”

Sherlock was still for a moment, in a way that John wanted to read as surprised. He gently set his violin down on a stack of books by his chair, and in a clean movement stood up. His hair was messy and his eyes were dark. “Maybe you should pay more attention. Of course... of course I’m angry. I’m angry you were in that pool, I’m angry I couldn’t prevent it, and I’m angry you were stupid enough to follow me around!” He turned away, one hand clenched in a fist, long fingers of the other grasping for something.

“Sherlock...” But John couldn’t finish, because he had to dodge a thrown book.

“Get out!” Sherlock shouted. “I’m not a hero, and you’re not my puppy. Only idiots attach themselves to people like this. Just go.” Another book smacked into the wall a few feet from John.

This was it, this is what the last several days had been leading up to. With all that tension something had needed to snap. John pictured himself limping up the stairs to his room and grabbing a few important things, leaving without another word. Sherlock would watch him go with a smug look, having driven John away, telling himself it was for John’s own good. Mrs. Hudson would ask if they’d had another domestic, Donovan would smile knowingly and say, “The freak doesn’t have friends, you’re better off as far away from him as you can get.” Lestrade might say... No, actually, neither of them would say anything. He wouldn’t be going to any more crime scenes, and there would be no more mad attempts on his life. No more kidnappings, no more arch-enemies, and no more racing through the streets of London with the power that only comes from having a singular purpose. Maybe he could finally have a date with Sarah that ended the way dates normally end.

John turned away from Sherlock, and slowly walked over to the the stairs. He heard a “hurrumph” from Sherlock that sounded like an “I knew it,” as he started walking up. His leg was stiffer mornings, so it was slow work. At least, it seemed slow because he imagined he could feel Sherlock sneering at his back the whole way. In his room, he looked around at the bare, beige walls. He didn’t have much there, just some clothing, one picture of his parents and Harry, his gun, and a few sentimental items. All his belongings would fit into a single box. John’s therapist said that was left over from his time in Afghanistan, and was indicative of his trust issues. Sherlock probably would have told her that much should have been obvious to a five year-old, that she was an idiot, and asked her where she’d gotten her degree (and then he would have diagnosed her, or told her that she was cheating on her husband with a client, or something). That’s exactly what John wanted to say to her some days. John walked over to his bedside table, and grabbed the cane, leaning on it. His current limp wasn’t really bad enough to warrant it, but the cane disguised some of the worst of it.

John used the cane to go back downstairs. Sherlock was sitting back down, though he hadn’t picked the violin back up. He looked up and locked eyes with John. There was that sneer that John knew he’d see. It had a finality in it, and John felt like he was already being treated like a stranger.

“You idiot.” John lifted up the cane, and Sherlock’s eyes flitted towards it uncertainly. John banged it against the ground several time to make his point, and it made a satisfying _thunk._ “You were wrong, you know, when you told Mrs. Hudson I’d take the flat? I knew already, long before you had Angelo bring me this cane. When he brought my cane, that’s when I knew I’d kill for you.”

“John--” Sherlock stood, sounding angry, but John barrelled through.

“So stop trying to push me away. I know what I’ve gotten into. You think you can get rid of me that easily? You think you can scare me off with one little temper tantrum, Sherlock? After all the kidnappings and explosions and death didn’t scare me off? I’m here, and I’m here for a damn long while. ”

“How? What makes you think I care? What makes you think I’m afraid?”

“Oh, don’t be daft. You’re not as confusing as you think. You were actually acting very... normal, if you can believe that.”

“John... He was bored.... Moriarty, he was bored.” He sat back down, hard, but continued to stare straight at John.

This was something else. Something John had not been expecting.

“The world’s only consulting criminal... and he still gets bored.” Sherlock looked almost pathetic.

“I’m not a hero,” Sherlock repeated with vehemence, “but...” _I am for you._ He tilted his head. _I’m what you want of me._ “When I saw you in the jacket--I could have killed him. I still could.” Sherlock reached up and caught John’s wrist, pulling him closer with surprising strength.

John looked right back, and tried not to show his own surprise. “I could have too.”

Sherlock had pulled John close enough that he could hear Sherlock’s rough breathing, and feel his heartbeat through his wrist. John’s own breathing was loud in his ears, and Sherlock didn’t slacken his grip, searching John’s eyes.

“You don’t understand.” He let go of John’s hand and started distractedly running fingers through his hair. “You don’t see. You’re too stupid. I’m not just dangerous because following me gets you shot at. Can’t you see?”

John shook his head mutely, and Sherlock interpreted it as John saying no. He stood up again, in agitation, so abruptly that he knocked over a pile of books. “I can’t let you watch me become that! It’s what Moriarty said, but-- _You’re_ my heart!” Sherlock looked instantly horrified at the words he had just uttered.

“Sherlock, I see! Sherlock!” John used this pause as an opportunity to grab Sherlock’s hands, which had barely stopped moving, and pulled him towards himself, perhaps more roughly than he’d needed to. He stared into Sherlock’s eyes, and Sherlock stared back, as unguarded as he’d been that one moment at the pool. “You haven’t become Moriarty, do you hear me? And you don’t have to.”

“John--”

“No. If you don’t want me to watch you become a monster, then don’t do it. I will watch you so you don’t turn into him.”

Sherlock stared at John, and believed him. Now, he leaned his head forward--mere inches, really--and kissed John. John hesitated for a split second, but kissed back forcefully. This close Sherlock felt like fire, and John held on possessively lest he burn up.

“I see... I’ve missed something again.” Sherlock parted from John for a moment, but traced the tip of his nose down John’s neck, toward his ear. His breath was warm and unexpected, his skin cool. John almost whimpered, but managed to keep a hold on his reactions, and then squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

John’s heart was beating as fast as if he had a bomb strapped to his chest again, and he didn’t really trust his voice. Or reality, at the moment. “And what was that?”

“That you love me.” He did something with his teeth that John felt all the way in his groin.

“Oh. Yes, that.” And suddenly it was clear. The missing piece. The look from the pool, from the hospital, caught in the corner of his vision since Sherlock had come home. “And you love me.”

“Very good, you have been learning to pay attention.”

Sherlock tried to guide John into the chair, but John was tired of being passive in this. He realized he’d been thinking about this for a long time. He pushed Sherlock straight back into his chair, and pulled Sherlock’s robe down, off his arms, so it laid crumpled around his waist, the belt still tied loosely, before Sherlock could object.

“Oh,” Sherlock moaned as John’s mouth found his neck, now, and John’s hands slipped under his shirt. John found purchase for his knees on either side of Sherlock’s, and  his hard cock pressed up against Sherlock’s thigh through his pants almost painfully--almost.

Sherlock fumbled with John’s shirt and pulled it off, cursing when it caught on John’s head. “Points for trying?” John suggested breathlessly, and his heart gave a start and tightened into a knot when Sherlock smirked.  John looked down, and stroked the skin under the band of Sherlock’s trousers, almost shyly, at first. His fingers traced over old bruises, unwittingly applying more and more pressure as Sherlock pressed his body into John more forcibly. Sherlock pulled on the knot of his robe’s belt.

“I didn’t try, John. I succeeded. Pay attention.” He sounded a little sulky, a little bored. But John only had to look at his flushed face and neck to know this wasn’t true.

“Oh, I am.”

Perhaps if John had been thinking more clearly, his unimaginative response would have embarrassed him, but he wasn’t, and Sherlock didn’t notice, or care... Or possibly he was displaying more tact by keeping silent than John had realized he possessed.

Silent to a point, anyhow.

They found a rhythm, briefly, rocking against one another and breathing heavily. After a moment of this, Sherlock shoved John back an arm’s length, so that he could undo the other man’s belt. He used his teeth to graze John’s nipple and John moaned something even louder, perhaps “Sherlock.” Sherlock undid the the belt and the trouser buttons, and stroked him through the thin fabric of his pants. John let out a feral noise of pleasure, but quickly pulled away. Sherlock’s smirk was back, and his eyes were narrowed, watching John (or perhaps cataloguing him, thought John, and was it wrong that of the two, cataloguing sounded more erotic?) All he could think about was wiping that smirk of his face, and seeing Sherlock’s eyes as wide and uncontrolled as they had been for a moment at the pool, and as they had been out of the corner of John’s eye for what felt like months.

He grabbed Sherlock’s hands and pressed them against the chair, hard. The smirk was a little more uncertain, though now John was sure Sherlock was cataloguing him. Still, John took the moment to study Sherlock. To just stare. He’d wanted this chance for a while, the chance to observe the observer. But John wasn’t Sherlock; he needed longer to take everything in.

And then he let go so that he could pull Sherlock’s shirt off and kiss and nip his way down Sherlock’s torso. John slid down to the floor so that he was on his knees and between Sherlock’s legs, and he undid Sherlock’s trousers and pulled them off, along with his silk pants, needing to pause for Sherlock to slither his way out of them. John grabbed Sherlock’s cock gently, and brought his lips close, eyes darting up to check for Sherlock’s reactions. There was a quick, vulnerable, almost scared look that past over Sherlock’s features, but he moaned out, “Yes, oh, yes,” so John slipped it into his mouth, using his hands to pull Sherlock’s legs out, angling him so that he sat far down on the chair, giving John a better vantage point. Sherlock’s grey eyes were wide, clear and intent on John. John fancied he could see a thousand distinct kinds of pleasure in them in only the space of a second. And then Sherlock moaned so loudly that John wondered if Mrs. Hudson could hear them. Proof that Sherlock could lose control this spectacularly squeezed John pleasantly somewhere in his gut and took away his last ounce of rational thought. He sucked hard, hands gripping Sherlock’s bare arse, and Sherlock came quickly, with a cry and a grunt. They were the most beautiful sounds John had ever heard. After a moment to collect himself Sherlock slid down on his knees and wrestled John’s pants off of him, too. Now it was his turn to pin John’s hands to the floor above his head, and stare. Sherlock knelt over him, and used one hand to trace the scar that ran from his arm pit to his hip, the ones on his stomach, and the one on his shoulder. John saw Sherlock furrow his brow as he lifted John’s right thigh to see a scar that traveled from hip to arse. John didn’t want to breathe, for fear of ruining this moment, though Sherlock’s fingers were still tracing fire across his body.

“I didn’t know you had this one. I thought I’d deduced most of your injuries.” Sherlock’s voice was quiet, husky, almost awed. John said nothing, and Sherlock met his eyes. Then Sherlock was properly on top of him again, and the moment was gone, but John was too busy to mind. Sherlock’s hands tried to find every nook and cranny of John, and John gasped and panted more with each discovery. Finally, after far too long, Sherlock took John in his mouth, John entwined his hands into Sherlock’s hair, and Sherlock hummed his own arousal. The vibration of his voice was enough to push John over the edge and he came, finally, with a grunt far quieter than Sherlock’s had been.

Sherlock crawled over and laid on the floor, next to John, and John roused himself long enough to turn into Sherlock and press his face into that place between neck and arm. “The scar you were looking at--” John began, but Sherlock cut in sharply.

“No!”

John raised his head questioningly.

Sherlock had the grace to look a little abashed. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want you to tell me. I want to...”

But John understood, and he smiled into Sherlock, so Sherlock stopped speaking. This time he didn’t need another word. Instead he laid there, on the floor of their flat, and observed the morning light falling in from the window, illuminating each of their hundred little bruises.

End


End file.
